Rating: 
Summary: Truly Ages Beyond
Review: I was fortunate enough to get to sit down and play this game at the Cyan studios during Mysterium 2003. I was slightly frustrated by the fact that the game didn't seem to play quite the same way as realMYST did in first person view, but Uru showed a vast improvement over any earlier title. The atmosphere and graphics were the most believable of anything I'd ever seen, and there are truly no words to describe the feeling of walking through the streets of D'ni. To address the earlier question, yes, Uru will have both single player and multiplayer elements. Rand Miller told us that players will be able to go through the game like a "Myst 4", and then take that online to gain access to the ever expanding world Cyan is promising. I also got the impression that D'ni will be something only accessable to those running multiplayer. I know most of us have seen some form of screenshots for Uru, perhaps even in the days of Mudpie, but I feel that the screenshots do not accurately show the game in it's full life. This game truly breathes, and if Cyan keeps their promises breathing will be an accurate term. The game is not designed to show hundreds of characters at once, but rather to encourage intimate gatherings of friends to take off and explore dynamically expanding and altering Ages. For anyone like me who was slightly disapponted by Exile, Uru is a true return to Mystishness, and if you don't have a broadband connection you will still be able to enjoy it.
Rating: 
Summary: But they better stick to their promises...
Review: I don't normally write a "review" for a product that has yet to be released (preview?), but all of the advance information that I have heard about this game has compelled me to rant and rave a little. First of all, the screen shots look incredible. I wouldn't expect anything less from the folks at Cyan. Also, the promise of Real Time 3D Rendering (RTR), with worlds as lush as this, is enough to make any adventure gamer drool. This means a radical departure from the typical point-to-point navigation through the game and a migration to a more fluid, "go anywhere, look anywhere" environment. Anyone who has played RealMyst knows what this means (also could mean pretty bodacious technical requirements - get those video and sound cards updated, or even a new box)! Now for the ranting. Two of the most talked about new features of the game are the switch to a third-person perspective with customizable "avatars" and the introduction of the online world of "Uru Live" where you can explore (and talk) with your friends or anyone else. Sure, these features are an admirable attempt to get the adventure gaming genre into the 21st century of technology so as to appeal more to the "sophisticated" Everquest-type players out there, but they are definitely NOT for me. The strongest appeal of the games of Myst, Riven and Exile was the sense of isolation; a "me against the environment" feel. The first-person perspective of seeing the world through the computer screen "eyes" was an absolutely critical facet to this appeal. I don't need to see who I am (i.e. a computer-generated avatar). I know what I look like. I don't need some goofy looking representation of me (or any other player) to interfere with the beauty of the rest of the environment. Fortunately (and I hope they stick to this promise), the Uru website states that there will be an option to switch back to a 1st person perspective. The site also claims that the additional online content will be explorable either on your own or with a group of as many people as you chose. I guess I'm a little selfish when it comes to these types of games. I want the whole world of the game to myself with only limited contact with inhabitants of that world and, definitely, no other "tourist" to get in the way! The only time I would want to stray from this would be if my wife and I both wanted to play the game together on two separate machines. We usually play games together as a "single" player anyway. Even more fun would be if I designed her avatar and vice versa without letting the other see what we chose...but, I digress! If they stick to these two previously mentioned promises, my wife and I will absolutely love this game and any additional content they subsequently "publish" in the online area. Otherwise, it will be tossed aside in favor of other upcoming games in this genre like Crystal Key II, Mysterious Journey II and Forever Worlds (to name a few). Long live the 1st person adventure game!
Rating:
Summary: Too Bad price/ship date are wrong
Review: Over at the Riven Unofficial Home Page I found out this information is wrong. But, there is good news and bad news. Ubi Soft has decided that this is neither the official price nor the official release date. That's the bad news. The potential good news is that it seems that a reluctant Cyan may allow Ubi Soft to twist their arm into making them create a single-palyer game separate and in addition to the multi-player elements.
Obviously this happened because Broadband Internet connections did not follow market trends and expand like crazy. Even though two consoles have joined the online fray (GameCube's effort so far is so weak as to not even count), broadband is still just a blip on gamers RADAR screen. I cannot wait to see what happens.
Oh, here is posible bad news (at least for me and the few rebellious stalwarts like me), it seems that Cyan has not recieved funding for the Mac version. Darnit -- The Man strikes again! ;-)
P.S. I would have left the ranking blank since it is too early for a review, but Amazon.com wouldn't let me. So, 5 is just really a hope and a place holder.
Rating:
Summary: Be among the first to visit D'ni!
Review: I'm thrilled that Cyan's current project is letting us finally visit D'ni. Myst was beautiful, strange and new. Riven's quality blew everything else away. And now, the people who gave us both those worlds are going to let us join them in the most revered setting of all... the underground cavern of D'ni! I will be the first in line to view this world with my own eyes; to walk where we've only read about in Myst: Book of Atrus, Myst: Book of Ti'Ana, and Myst: Book of D'ni; to stand where Atrus stood when Gehn first brought him down into the mysterious place Ti'ana discovered as a young woman... ... I can't wait to visit D'ni! I'm starting to pack, NOW. ~ Kha'tie
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Rating:
Summary: An adventure gamer's dream
Review: Uru is my top game to look forward to this year. After seeing tons of screenshots and learning as much as I can about it, Uru looks like it will become yet another classic. The Myst series has always been popular for its challenging puzzles and incredible graphics. I'm sure Uru will a great addition to the Myst saga. I can't wait to see what D'ni looks like.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but flawed game
Review: Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is an outstanding game with exceptional images, sounds and puzzles ... so why four stars and not five? Uru has two significant flaws: 1) You can't save your game. Your save points are set by touching each Age's seven Journey Cloths. It's the game designers - not the gamer - who determines save points. Good save points make it easy for the gamer to explore alternate endings, and more importantly, to avoid having to solve the same puzzle repeatedly. But unless you play Uru perfectly, some Journey Cloths are placed so that you must solve several puzzles multiple times. 2) Your avatar can walk, run, climb and jump. Unlike Myst, Riven and Exile, Uru is no longer restricted to point-and-click movement from one scene to the next. But there's a problem. Your avatar is keyboard and mouse controlled, not joystick enabled. Its third person perspective is occasionally sloppy. Moreover, it can't use its hands when moving objects; that's a ridiculous constraint. Uru's minimum hardware requirements are... 800 MHz Pentium/AMD Athlon
250 MB RAM
32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX/ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better Assuming you don't want long delays between Age loads, I strongly recommend, "or better." My guess, Uru really wants a 2 GHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM and a 128 MB video card. Uru is designed for higher end hardware. Uru also has hardware requirement gotchas. Here are some of them... * 98SE is specific; no allowance is made for Windows 98. * The video card requirement is precise: it's either a 32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX, or an ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better. No other video card will work, including lower end versions of nVidia or ATI Radeon. * The "CD-ROM: 4x or better (not recommended for use with CD-RWs)" requirement is imprecise. Didn't fully appreciate it until I bought the expansion pack, which clearly states, "This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some disk and virtual drives." Uru will not work properly in either a CD-R or CD-RW. Finally, here's an Uru synopsis: You begin in the Desert. After touching seven Journey Cloths, you are given access to a linking book, which takes you to Relto (Island in the Clouds). Relto is your refuge and starting point between game sessions. To solve Uru, you must transfer pillars from Teledahn (Mushroom Age), Gahreesen (Fortresses Age), Kadish Tolesa (Mechanical Age) and Eder Gira/Eder Kemo (Volcano and Garden Ages) from the Bahro (Pillar Cave) to Relto. When all four pillars reside in Relto, you transfer them back to the Bahro and return to the Desert to solve its remaining puzzles.
Rating:
Summary: Adventure fun for all ages
Review: The latest in the Myst/Riven/Exile series follows in the tradition of "pushing the envelope" the folks at Cyan have been so good at for over ten years! Uru is not strictly a sequel but part of an ongoing saga. While it is a "must buy" for avid Myst fans, it would also captivate someone who has never played a Myst game. This game is intended to be played on-line with a broadband connection to the Internet, but the boxed version contains a single-player game that is an outstanding follow-on in the Myst tradition. The single-player game is the prerequisite for going on-line, and the first month of on-line play is included in the price. Visit their web site at http://uru.ubi.com/ for a preview and additional details. This game has something for everyone - spectacular graphics, challenging puzzles, and a story line that follows the back story of the Myst sagas. An informal survey of about 200 current players shows an even distribution of ages from late teens through "over 60." The game is played in the third person - you start off by creating an avatar - a graphic representation of yourself. In the game, "U R U" - You Are You, and you're actually in the game. That's not to say you can't improve on nature a bit. I'm in my late-50's and admit to having shaved a few years and a few pounds when I created my avatar! You control your avatar as you explore the worlds that you are actually walking, running, and jumping through, interacting with various objects to open doors, operate machinery, gain information, and progress through the game. The on-line version is even more exciting, adding the exploration of a vast underground city together with your fellow adventurers with whom you interact visually and with real-time voice communication. If you're not familiar with the Myst saga, it revolves around an ancient civilization called the D'ni that has developed a way of traveling from world to world (called "Ages" in the game) using special books called Linking Books. Each of the games has four or five Ages, and Uru is no exception, with six Ages in the single-player version. Each offers a totally different opportunity to explore, solve puzzles, and learn more of the background story that is being woven together into an elaborate tapestry. The on-line version promises even more Ages for the adventurer, probably at the rate of one new Age every one or two months. I've been playing adventure games since the "original" - ADVENT by Crowther and Woods in 1979, and Uru is a worthy latest step in the development of this genre. Like all of the Cyan games, there is no violence or gore, and the game is suitably rated "E" for everyone. Uru offers a challenging and enjoyable experience for adventurers of all ages.
Highly recommended! Walt Scrivens
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant & Appreciated
Review: i felt this game had enough challenge & atmosphere to credit the team that worked so hard to build it..(!) i dont understand why this game was knit-picked so badly. i thought the moving objects were really interesting especially with the way they mimicked actual objects. i've played games with stick-figues for graphics that took *hours & dozens of tries* to position. Having a little effigy of yourself running around on the screen is adorable. All the different camera features with total surround was brilliant. The only reason this game didnt get 5 stars was because it does need a patch to run on XP.
Rating: 
Summary: It doesn't stand out
Review: When I first heard that Uru would allow the user to make their own character and place him/her into this world, I was very excited. However, once I got my hands on the game itself and learned how troublesome it was to simply move this person around the worlds, I was very disappointed. My father and I have been playing these games since Riven and have loved them immensely. Every year, right after Christmas we begin to play them and usually continue nonstop till we have beat it. However, it has been about a year since Uru has first come out and it is just now that we are actually beginning to go through it again and finish. The past games had problems that could have been solved by using clues spread throughout the world. But I find with Uru that you just have to play guess and check a lot which I have never found to be the way when it came to Myst. Now I am usually a patient person but the loading time between worlds is unbelievable. This game requires a lot of linking I have found and some of the problems are timed (I am thinking of the Paths of the Shell expansion pack on this comment), so you really start panicking when your computer takes a good 5 minutes before something actually shows up. And then to actually get the player moving without being all jolty, it takes another minute to load. Sigh. Very disheartening. I have found that with Uru and even Exile the quality has come down. Riven seems to be their own real achievement currently but hopefully Myst IV will redeem them... if only I could get it to load on my computer. Sigh. These games have it in for me and my computer, I tell you.
Rating: 
Summary: SO disappointed...
Review: I was a bit suspicious of this game at first. Wasn't the Myst Trilogy supposed to stop with three games? I was rightfully cautious. It's been about a year since I've had this game, and I finally figured out that I don't play it because it is no fun! I had the problems with system requirements too, but after updating my graphics driver, things finally started working. I had been stuck in the desert you get dumped into first because whenever I approached a certain journey cloth, the game crashed. The driver update solved that. However, once I could go to any of the worlds in the game, I noticed how bad the game was.
My first complaint is that MYST DOES NOT NEED AVATARS! I enjoyed being able to click and proceed to the next screen. I DON'T NEED TO WATCH SOMEONE WALK AROUND. If I wanted to do that, I would be a stalker! Like other reviewers have said, the slideshow was so much better.
Second, the controls of the other games were SO MUCH EASIER! Clicking, moving mouse, clicking again. There is elegance in simplicity. None of this <insert bad language here> that is thrown into Uru. If it can't be done by clicking the mouse and using your head (Ubisoft - please don't take that literally - I've heard the horror stories of kicking rocks), it shouldn't be in a Myst game.
Third, I am not interested in a Myst online game. Games like Myst, Riven, and Exile do not belong in an online environment. I admit that I haven't tried Uru online, but I have no desire to do so. If the game comes out, it should be GOOD ENOUGH to make me want to play it online.
In short, this game is not well developed. I prefer DOS games to this! It overworks my computer and it is NO FUN TO PLAY. Cyan and Ubisoft, please do not try anything like this again. Myst fans, stick with Myst, Riven, and Exile, the real Myst trilogy.
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